TV News Wrap-Up: 'Hotel Transylvania, 'The Vampire Diaries' & More

A Hotel Transylvania TV series is in development at Sony Pictures; The Vampire Diaries adds three new villains for season 7; Nikki Reed joins Sleepy Hollow for season 3, AMC's Turngets renewed for a third season; HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero gets a new trailer; and Manhattan's season 2 premiere date is revealed.

-

Sony Pictures Animation and Corus Entertainment’s Nelvana Studio are partnering for a new animated TV series based on the film Hotel Transylvania.

The upcoming series will focus on the teenage years of Dracula's daughter Mavis (portrayed by Selena Gomez in the film) and a group of her friends as they have monster-themed adventures. Nelvana Studio will develop and produce the series, with distribution handled jointly by Sony Animation and Nelvana Enterprises. It is expected to air in early 2017.

Hotel Transylvania launched to mediocre reviews, but the film was a box office success and a sequel will be launching later this year. If the sequel manages to recapture the success of the first film, it's not hard to imagine the television series will also be a successful project. However, it seems a bit early to be announcing the project as the fledgling franchise has yet to prove its staying power.

Hotel Transylvania 2 premieres September 25th, 2015.

Source: Sony Pictures Animation

-

The CW's long-running series The Vampire Diaries adds three new villains - heretics Valerie, Nora and Mary Louise - for its seventh season, portrayed by Elizabeth Blackmore, Scarlett Byrne and Teressa Liane respectively.

Blackmore Left, Byrne Middle, Liane Right

Valerie will be one of Lily Salvatore's heretics, endowed with black magic and a dark attitude. She doesn't like living in Mystic Falls and tensions mount as the rules set by Lily begin to wear on her patience. Nora and Mary Louise are a pair of heretics interested only in chaos. The two will also be the first same-sex couple to be portrayed in the series. All three will be recurring characters and will be introduced in the season premiere later this year.

During the panel at San Diego Comic-Con last week, showrunner Julie Plec teased the characters as "nasty, nasty girls."

Twilightstar Nikki Reed is set to join the cast Sleepy Hollow next season, playing famous American historical figure Betsy Ross.

Ross is described as "sexy with an unexpected physical prowess." By day she's the famous seamstress who created the first flag for the fledgling America at the behest of General George Washington. However, when night falls, Ross works as an operative inside Washington's mysterious ring of spies. Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) has noted in both previous seasons that Ross was an old love interest.

Reed is the first new cast member to join the series since showrunner Mark Goffman stepped down and Orlando Jones left the series ahead of the third season renewal. Fans of the series were disappointed at the sudden departure of Jones, but hopefully Reed and new showrunner Clifton Campbell can bring a new fan-favorite character to the forefront with Betsy Ross.

AMC has renewed its historical drama Turnfor a 10-episode third season.

Based on the book Washington's Spies by Alexander Rose, Turn follows Abraham Woodhull (Jamie Bell) as he bands together with a group of childhood friends to try and turn the tide of the Revolutionary War. The series has never achieved numbers comparable to AMC's The Walking Dead or Breaking Bad, but the show has been consistently dependable in terms of viewership. In fact, AMC and Sundance TV President Charlie Collier noted that the series benefited from a recent uptick in viewers.

"We loved what we saw creatively from the 'Turn: Washington's Spies' team in season two, and the show achieved something that is increasingly rare in television today -- a growing audience during the season. 'Turn' continues to attract a dedicated and distinctively upscale audience across multiple platforms and it has carved out a meaningful space in AMC's 'eclectic by design' programming palette."

While describing the audience as 'distinctively upscale' might come across as more than a little pompous, there's no arguing with the numbers. If Turn continues on this course, there will be plenty more seasons to follow.

HBO has released a new trailer (below) for its upcoming 6-part miniseries Show Me a Hero.

Show Me a Hero is the latest project from David Simon (The Wire) and the series will be directed by by Paul Haggis (Crash). The series is based on the nonfiction book of the same name by author Lisa Belkin. . The story is centered around Mayor Nick Wasicsko (portrayed by Oscar Isaac) who took office during the same year that the federal courts in New York ordered public housing to be built in the middle of a white, middle-class neighborhood. The series will explore the ideas of home and community, along with race relations, through the politicians and citizens of Yonkers, New York.

WGN America announced this week that Manhattanseason 2 will premiere on October 13th, 2015.

Manhattan follows the lives of the scientists contributing to The Manhattan Project and their families in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Being locked in the most secretive town in the country, the scientists sacrifice their marriages as well as their sanity as they race to end World War II with a nuclear bomb. The second season will be building up to The Trinity Test, the first detonation of an atomic weapon and one of the most defining moments in the world's history.